Just have patience. That is what will determine the outcome of your wheels.

You could skip the tripoli and do sanding with:

1803006001000mabe 2000 (if you havent quit by then)

Once you reach 1000 grit or 2000 grit you can just work in mother's aluminum polish with a rag and it'll turn out even better than if you used tripoli. I would just go this route because I have done this on many pieces now. Here is a little inspiration and some past work I have done:

Start with the finest grit possible. Start finer than you think you need and if that won't cut it step up a grit coarser. There is a fine line on where to start. Starting one step too coarse can actually take more time and work to get the deep scratches out than starting one step too fine. On the other hand starting a couple steps too fine can take forever or never even go deep enough to take out the imperfections. I would never consider 80 grit unless it had some crazy deep pitting from sitting at the bottom of the ocean for a decade. Even 180 seems uncalled for IMO in most situations. For something that looked good and was reasonably smooth I would try to start around 400 grit. If that didn't cut it I might step down to 180 or 220.

More importantly power tools will change your life. I don't know what you have access to but take advantage of what you got.

One of my favorite tools is my Pneumatic angle grinder. Something like this.

Now I would try to start with a fine grit nylon roloc which should be the blue one.

I would quickly hit the whole surface and work out what I could easily with that. If there were areas that it didn't clean up nice I would go to the next coarser which would be the maroon. If that didn't take out areas I would hit just those areas with the brown (coarse). Now if there were areas with deep pitting I would step down to a flap disk but use the finest possible and only in the areas that really needed it.

Once you can no longer see any imperfections at the grit you are at move up to a finer grit. If that reveals any imperfections clean them up with a grit lower but only hit that area then go back to the next finer grit.

This may sound a little bassakwards but I would be willing to bet that 90% of the DIY polishes that look good in pics will still have visible sanding marks from coarser grit abrasives and the few that don't probably have a lot of time put into getting rid of them. I can tell you it sucks when you get down to 600 grit to notice 80 grit scratches that won't be taken out by anything finer than 220. Then you go back and start all over again.

If you can use the roloc mesh wheels from the fine disk especially if you do your final round with one pretty worn down you can jump to about 400 grit. The other option is to use buffing bobs and wheels and jump straight to a very coarse compound. Mcmastercarr has some very coarse compounds that will allow you to jump from a pretty rough finish to polishing. What I do is wear out a nylon roloc pretty good and then add compound to that and use that as the buffing bob. This makes a pretty good transition from sanding to polishing. Once you get most the ugly stuff worked out you can move to a proper bob or buffing wheel and compound.

This would probably cut your time by 50% to 75% over doing it with a sander and hand finishing and leaves a lot of the heavy effort up to the grinder instead of you. It can also get into much tighter areas than your average sander.

Yoshi for some reason I didn't even think about the pneumatic angle grinder. Seems like an easer way, especially all the little tight spots. Now I only have to get mine back from my dad and then take take the wheels to my friends house with the air compressor.

All of those parts took quite some time. I would say I spent 40-50 hours on all three total. The intake manifold was very difficult because of the casting marks and pitting. If your all about a polished finish then you know that pitting or cast texture is the worst material to get smooth. It takes a butt load of time. Which part of the celica supra wheels are you trying to polish? if your trying to polish the inside of the spokes where the cast it, then it will be difficult.

Did you remove the factory clear coat on the wheels?

I only used a palm sander with a low grit on small spots on the supra wheels (where curb rash is). If you start using air tools, dremels, sanding disks they will leave a lot of marks that will still take a lot of time to get out. This is why unless you have a real industrial buffer motor with cotton wheels(professional polishing shops), I do it all by hand. Professional polishers almost never use sanding disks, they will use cotton wheels with abbrasive materials. They will use them on a buffer or air tools.

But obviously you are not a pro polishing shop and prob dont have the money. So the steps I provided will more than likely be the best way for you. If you are observant, you will see when your previous grit marks are sanded out. Also, the micro scratches (about 600 grit and higher) are mostly taken out with mother's aluminum polish and a rag. You will see some swirls in your polishing if you dont use 2000 grit or higher.

The last tip I have for you is that electric or power tools with sanding disks will not work unless you are working on a flat surface with plenty of room to get into the nooks & crannies with a large tool. If you try and use a power tool to sand a curves surface down, you will mess up the shape of the surface and will have to hand sand it back down to the right shape. However, there are some instances where you have to use do this. For instance on that intake manifold, I used a grinder with a 80 grit flapper wheel to remove all of the cast texture. I then had to go back and reshape the surface. Doing it this way saved me more time because hand sanding cast texture will turn you into an old man.

If this is your first time polishing wheels, it will not be perfect but they will look great if you take your time. In between each stages of sanding you can rub the wheel down with aluminum polish and see if there are any marks left over. The sanding process is the long part. The polishing process only takes an hour or two even by hand. Make sure you when you start polishing with a rag, you wipe it in really good (for like 5min) so you can see the final finish and not a partially polished finish.

Also, if your not too picky, you can have the wheels sent off and redone. They will not polish them but they will put the shiny clear coat on them that makes them look polished. This is the same thing that most of the wheels on ebay have. XXR, rota, etc all have this. They arent polished but they will look good. I think it costs somewhere between 350-550$ to get it done this way.

samoan kid wrote:Alright guys I've noticed some pitting. I don't want to take off too much material. Help lol

If you use my method you will be surprised what a little time with a blue nylon mesh disk will take out. Go over everything with that first and take out everything that comes out easy or needs a little light massaging. If there is any pitting or casting marks that didn't come out then I would step up to a little coarser disk to blend it out. Just use it on the areas that need it. Once it looks good then go to a healthy blue disk and take out all the coarser scratches. After that go to an older more worn blue disk and blend everything out with that. As the disk gets worn down it's scratches will become less and less deep so you can even use it to take out deeper scratches from the when it was healthier. After that I'll start hitting the wheel with black compound and this will start giving the surface a bit of a polish and also starts to polish out the nylon disk a little bit getting the finish finer and finer. Once I'm pretty happy with that I'll hit it with 1000 grit wet. This will likely make more imperfections apparent so you can go back and hit just the imperfection with 600 or even 400 if you need to or you can use your polish glazed nylon mesh to try to blend it out. Good polishing will take out 1000 grit marks but going up to 1500 or 2000 gives more opportunities for those to take out deeper scratches you may have missed.

After that you can start hitting it with buffing compounds.

If you don't have much for dedicated buffing tools you can also use your angle grinder and or a straight pneumatic grinder for that. Generally you want lower RPM for polishing and a higher torque motor is nice but if it's not available you can do well just by throttle and pressure modulation with the grinder. There are a ton of bobs and wheels you can get for your grinder.

Once the diameter starts to get bigger the surface speeds increase greatly. If you spin too fast you can cook the compound and or you can also start to distort the surface giving it more of an orange peel ripple. And more rigid wheels.

I have spent probably thousands of hours polishing metal and probably thousands more on paint, gel coat and other coatings. I have gotten to the point where I try to avoid hand work if at all possible unless I can hand buff if faster than breaking out the right tools and putting them back away. On a little 6 sq in repair or something I may finish it by hand if it's easy. Then there have been projects like tool steel mold tooling that had to stay within .0005" tolerances that had to be done completely by hand up to the final buff. That becomes time consuming.

Thanks for all the great info guys. As of right now I'm trying to get as much done by hand because my dad still has like all of my tools and Idk when I'm going to get them back. Is trying to get the pitting out by hand pointless untill I get the tools? That's kind of what I'm thinking but Idk I nay just have to try and see

I finished polishing a set of celica-supras not too long ago, using Jeonsah's method. They turned out MAGNIFICENT! Unfortunately I cannot post any pictures, they are on someone else's car.It is easy to do, it just takes a butt-load of time and a lot of patience. But once you see your own reflection in them... man, it is an awesome feeling! BTW I also skipped the tripoli step, I went straight to polishing and they turned out fine.

Bought a new angle grinder because my dad lost mine or whatever man does it cut the time down a lot and helps get rid of the pitting. After I hit it with this stuff then I'm gona hand sand a polish and be done

Also, i figured id throw this tip in for you. Those drill cotton wheel attachments are garbage. Stay away from those. They are not able to remove cast or anything and do not spin fast enough. They're strictly for polishing with white rouge sticks. Even then I still recommend skipping the white rouge and using mother's aluminum polish.

If you are referring to the ones I posted they are not designed for drills, they are designed for die grinders and yes they are not designed for removing cast, they are designed for polishing. You can use them with rouge or any number of other compounds.

I sanded everything smooth, then I sanded that shiz again. Depending on the surface I started with determines the grit.ended with 400 or 500. Then 8" spiral sewn buff with Tripoli. After all the sanding marks are gone the preliminary buff is done.Using a loose wound buff with White rouge, will remove the fine scratches from previous compound and bring out the depth and color of the aluminum.